For those of you who haven’t heard of BYOD yet within the Australian education or corporate spheres, it stands for ‘Bring Your Own Device’, and it is the next big step in establishing the technological revolution of education within our schools. The integration of devices into schools is not an entirely new concept, with the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) program which has been around since 2007 being a multinational organisation now (including involvement by Australia). This program in general has been met with widespread criticism in the U.S after the abandonment of the program by one executive, and the obvious environmental issues such as maintenance and safety of a laptop within a school environment. For those of you who are familiar with the slow and often frustrating changes in the methods of delivering education, this all comes as no surprise.

The importance of “non-curriculum” learning attributes such as self-directed learning and independence, has become a major focal point for the redevelopment of many learning areas within the Australian Curriculum. Skills of motivation and personal drive are more often being linked these days to successful job acquisition and job satisfaction than skills learned through other more traditional learning areas. This makes us wonder about what else may be up for a change when it comes to the way we look at learning from a young age.

A number of technologies, particularly which aim to be compatible with a high volume of users, are marketing their services and products as “minimal learning curve” products. The same is true of online user experiences, where websites promise a two minute tour of the website, or a 30 second tutorial video. Our team at AVT are all about emerging user compatible technologies, using a number of software programs and online databases which self-generate reports and recognise typical user errors within half an hour of using the product. New mind-mapping technology that has been available on the global market for some time promises users almost an immediate understanding of the software and associated processes. It is true that being described as a near ‘zero learning curve’ product is a powerful and impressive claim, however it begs the question: is this developing the trend of user convenience, or is it removing our ability to design and create our own user experience?